


You Can’t Get Away From It

by sxetia



Category: Chainsaw Man (Manga)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Gray area, Implied Smut, Mentor/Student, Morning After, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-ship, Relationship Study, Teacher/Student, maybe canon divergent if you want to look at it that way, post-smut, risque but not nsfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24158530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: What comes after?
Relationships: Aki Hayakawa/Himeno
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	You Can’t Get Away From It

He traces the indents and creases all along her back — the imprint of taut muscle perpendicular to the distended ridges of her spine, pockmarked scars that have grown ugly and brown. When she breathes in his arms tighten a little more, and when she exhales he savors the feeling of her breath against his forearms. Moments of silence like these are what Aki favors the most, but it’s a little easier to cherish it whenever she’s around. His chin rests on her shoulder and his nose buries itself in the back of her hair, where he partakes in her scent and struggles to separate it from the miasma of booze and sex on her person. 

His head hurts.

She’s always the most affectionate whenever she’s hammered. He’s probably half to blame, the way he enables her: get her drunk enough to coax the affection he craves out, and get himself drunk enough to be willing to accept and reciprocate it. Taboo suggests it’s flat-out wrong to make a habit out of sleeping with your mentor, but Aki is a man of simple virtue: follow his own motives, and nothing else. Revenge will allow him closure and a means to shut the door on his old life. The naïve rookie within thinks he can find a new one with Himeno. 

He thinks about the messy kisses and unsteady hands against his chest, and finds himself craving it all. He worries if it’s only when she’s drunk. She kisses everyone when she’s drunk.

* * *

She watches him, lying on his back with eyes focused on everything except for her. Intense eyes, black as the hair that touched his shoulders. Those eyes have a story to them, beady and precise and everything her own eye isn’t. She knows the story, he wears it proudly on his sleeve and will tell anybody who asks about his quest for revenge, but he won’t let any of it on his face: eyes empty, expression vacant. Her eye is too big and always so sad, like a malignant tumor that blemished her face. No matter how wide she smiles she’s never able to shake the weariness, or convince anybody that it’s ever anything but a cry for help. 

Everything is a cry for help, for Himeno. Begging for something that matters and something to hold onto, pleading that somebody will put together the pieces and figure out who she really is for her. Aki is smart — he’s so smart, way smarter than a twenty-year-old should have to be, but it’s a wiseness earned by pain. She knows if he’s smart enough to figure her out, then he’s smart enough to see all the fucked-up, desperate pieces. They always end up in a mess of skin and sweat whenever they drink together.

Her head hurts. 

She’ll take affection, pantomimed love from wherever she can get it: strangers, other coworkers, whoever asks if she’s had enough to drink. She wonders if that makes Aki think he’s not special. She worries that he’s smart enough to know when she’s being blatant, and that she’s coming on too strong. 

Aki is special to Himeno, but she can’t imagine a reality where that thought is worth humoring.

* * *

When they finally rise she keeps to herself, gives him space. He decides he doesn’t want it and lets long, slender arms creep over her shoulders and around her neck. He doesn’t say anything, but he supposes he doesn’t need to.

They share a cigarette; as has become ritual by this point, and it's the only way their lips meet after the deed's been done and the dignity comes creeping back. Himeno thinks it's trite. Aki thinks it's only proper. Whenever it's his turn to take a drag she cuts the crap, plucks the coffin nail from his mouth, and replaces it with her own lips.

They stay that way for a while, a pile of half-broken people making one whole in a mess of unwashed sheets. She feels loved. He lets himself love.

**Author's Note:**

> i have not thought about anything except for chainsaw man for the past five days


End file.
